There’s literally no point. I already use my phone for phone things, not as a second computer.

I’m currently in Asia and – in this country at least – you are basically required to have a smart phone to do anything. Credit cards don’t exist. And they use QR payments for most things. So that implies a camera and a banking app (for your bank). Many places don’t accept cash anymore (!) - I don’t really get how they can do that because not everyone has a smart phone (poor people (obviously) & tourists (not even allowed to get bank accounts here) come immediately to mind — of which there are millions of both). I think so far it’s not a big deal because these people just spend their money elsewhere, but I worry this will become entrenched.

Anyway, I tried “dumb phoning” my iPhone and there’s just way too many things I rely on daily that require a smart phone: paying by QR code, banking, international banking, translating, navigation, ride booking, accommodation booking, messaging on iMessage, Line, Messenger (almost everyone in this country uses the last 2). When travelling in a foreign country, these things aren’t really optional. If I can’t pay for a bus ticket or food, I could be really screwed.

Now you might say some of things in my list are doable without apps; like accommodation booking… sure. But even if you find a place old skool style, how do you contact them? Most don’t have web pages, they use Facebook pages. And the contact info is usually a Line or Messenger id. Even if somehow you managed to find a phone number, they are unlikely to speak English. I’m old enough to remember travelling before the internet and honestly it was great and worked well, but that was because everyone was on the same footing. We’ve lost that and I actually think it’s much more difficult now.

I’ve gotten rid of most social media (except fediverse) which has helped my screen time a lot, but I think going back to a feature phone is, unfortunately, impossible here. I do hope that they see how economically unfair requiring a smart phone is though and at least pass some laws that require shops to take cash payments (last I heard these laws did exist in the West).

i don’t want my phone to be dumb, I want it to be open source, front to back! The issue of smartphones isn’t that its “too smart”, instead we should talk about why the control of our phones aren’t within our grasp, but on the palm of corpos and govs.

you want to use your smartphone while keeping it simple? Install less apps and disable ALL telemetry (this is where being open source comes in).

I would buy a feature phone today, preferably something eink, if it was painless to switch my SIM between it and my smart phone. Having to take the SIM out of one, put it in the other, then turn on the phone is not painless and they do not design the little draws to support thousands of open/closes against the contacts to read the SIM.

There are times I want the smart phone to have the SIM because I will want or need the extra functionality and if you just make the feature phone do everything then its just morphed into a smart phone with extra steps. I want the feature phone to be basic as I can get away with.

That said, I really want google wallet or similar that I can share between the two phones for my passes and tickets, audio streaming support, and maps. Something like a Hisense A9 would fit the bill but the temptation to add more apps than the basics would be too great, plus I still need a way to switch SIMs between the phones.

I cannot replace my smart phone, rather than supplement, with any feature phone because I use it for such a wide range of things. I can ssh from it to my home devices, I can manage my bank accounts, it tracks my health, it provides video and audio streaming on and offline, I can read and write documents/spreadsheets, plus anything you can do via a web browser.

Navigation and manga

I grew up before mobile phones so I know I have the skills to function without one. There isn’t much I would miss. I am ok without social media, maps, chat apps etc.

Its the odd little things that I don’t do very often that could get annoying. Stuff like translating a label in a foreign language. There isn’t really an easy way to do that without a smart phone.

Buying train tickets, buying concert tickets, checking schedules for work or school or train times, communicating with people over something that isn’t SMS or calls, taking nice photos on the go, listening to music.

Of course many of these would be solvable with a different device (handheld camera, mp3 player) or by buying tickets and checking schedules in advance, but the trade off isn’t worth it for me

Aside from the Rotary Un-Phone, there are pretty much no dumb phones anymore. Those that market themselves as dumb are just reskinned full-fat platforms.

Even almost all flip phones are smart phones with a dumb skin, as they run either Android or KaiOS.

The main reason why I would switch is for device security - a true dumb phone OS that operates purely out of the ROM and has no ability to install anything that could survive a reboot.

And for something that primitive, it would be a flip phone on par with the Motorola StarTac. Simple black-on-green screen, low-res display, with a calendar and address book as the only non-phone, non-SMS functionality.

I need maps and Line. Banking and everything else is nice but maps and Line are essential.

Mainly my music. I’ve long thought about a dumb phone to avoid gps tracking everywhere as well as the spyware built in and the needless looking at it all the time. But music and podcasts need to come with me wherever I go. So I’d be carrying something akin to a smart phone around anyway. Doesn’t really side step the problem effectively.

You may as well ask me to throw away me phone entirely. I don’t carry a smartphone to make phone calls. I hate phone calls.

95% of that is spam.

I use my phone to take pictures, send those pictures, look for restaurants, navigate to those restaurants, listen to music, etc.

Having a software authentication that can hold multiple keys for MFA. I’d love to switch to a dumb phone but that’s pretty much a requirement and I’ve never found a device for MFA that is as convenient for MFA

Well, I can buy a GPS map device. Cash payments are not much of a problem until the Govt. starts adding that extra tax on cash withdrawal from ATMs. I will need to wait for companies to grow a brain and stop using WhatsApp for work.

For all else, I use my computer anyway.

Why would I want a device that I never use? I only make phone calls roughly 3 times per week. I message multiple times a day, but flip phones had shitty interfaces for typing. The vast majority of my phone use is web search, camera, navigation, and messaging. Flip phones could get better cameras than they used to have. Their screens were too small to do great at web searching. Navigation might work, I guess. Although I used to love my Treo and Pre for the full physical keyboard, I prefer swype typing now to tapping or physical keys.

Let’s start with the price